Main menu

This WordPress.com site is the cat’s pajamas

Please Say hello and welcome to the 12 Month Project, here he is Nemo Noir!

I will start in the same way as before, clearing out all the Career Agent Missions. So far this evening I’ve completed the Business and Exploration paths, and I’m half way through Industry and Military. I’ll do Advanced Military last.

These missions are fairly straight forward and you can stack them. One neat little trick with exploration is to collect all the required drop BEFORE needing to hand in the reward, this enables you to complete them much fast. I also just outright buy the resources that are required for some missions instead of mining or building them myself. You may still need to mine for 1 cycle at the mission site in order to complete it.

once I complete all these missions I’ll probably have around 10m in cash and a high quality Frigate to move to the next area with.

You can complete the Career Agent missions a total of 12 times. 3 times for each faction, and there are 4 factions.

Currently training Survey to 3, as this opens lots of other scanning related skills and then onto Frigate 3+4. I’ll be on holiday for 5 days next week without access to my computer, so I’ll probably train Frigate V while I’m gone.

My general aim is to earn funds in a similar fashion to last time, Null sec exploration. Its lucrative and far from boring. I’ll aim to have Covert Ops Cloak shortly after I earn the plex which will make my trips a little safer. I may have to fly an Astero, which while expensive its my quickest means to get a Covert Ops Cloak. Covert Ops ships are a considerably longer train.

So I’ve shown that its feasible to plex an account within the first 21 days, but is it feasible to fund an account purely this way?

So my next challenge is to not only fund an account this way, but to fund it for at least 12 months or more specifically to have the account active for (12 x 30 + 21) consecutive days.

Rules:

I cannot use my own external funds to purchase plex.

I cannot transfer assets or isk from my other accounts.

I cannot join any corporation of my other accounts.

I cannot generate funds in an Eve bannable way.

My new characters can’t know about my existing ones.

Now that we have that out-of-the-way, I can beg, steal, borrow, build, sacrifice, scam, sleaze, circumvent, seduce etc etc In other words do whatever I want that is legal within the framework of eve. So no bonus room antic’s, no theft of credit card numbers, but accepting generous donations* are perfectly fine.

I shall blog about my exploits and try to track time spent and isk earned + assets accumulated.

I’ll create the character later today and get a day one blog out after.

My name is Markus Plexius, and I have plex’ed in 21 days . (I’ve not used the plex yet, I’ll transfer it to my main and use it for another project on this website).

I took a day off from exploration to explore the real world a little, on my return to eve I was well rested and ready for the final push. Due to the very quiet nature of the area I was in it was mostly plain sailing.

I gradually increase my holding up to 180m at which point I know, if I can get this haul home I’m all set for the plex… so I decided to try something.

There have been many occasions where I’ve not been able to scan down a particular site no matter how hard I tried, so I decided to bring my cloaky mains Anathema over to try to scan down the site, to see what valuables might be contained within. So I scan down the site with ease, and warp the squad to the location, leaving my main cloaked…. but there is a problem….. we arent the only ones in system.

So while I have my main safely cloaked away in the Relic Site, I have my other toon burn to the first site, and rapidly start accessing the mini game…. the other ship in system is a Tech 2 scanning ship… he finds the site we are in…..he burns his way to Markus….. now the idea all along had been not to receive help from my other toons… so if this gets ugly I’m going to have to let party happen without intervention :(…..

The other pilot is in a T2 Covert Ops Frigate, if it has a Cloak and a probe launcher, then it will only have space for 1 weapon so I dont actually expect much to happen… I may spoken too soon. I’m locked… and scrammed… and he is flinging missles in my direction 80 dmg OUCH! my ability to tank is tiny, so I decide to bug out, luckily his scram isnt enough to over power my Stabilizers but for a moment I was afraid.. losing another 180m would not have been fun.

I then head back to High Sec via a wormhole, and unfortunately for this blog uneventful.

Once back in high sec I head to JITA to sell my wares, this time using the market to sell for the best price by setting up buy orders, I dont get the money instantly but I get much more than if I had gone for the instant win.

I come back the following morning to find myself 10 million short of the plex, so most of my sell orders had been fulfilled. I still have in the region of 20 million yet to sell, so I look into how much I can get an instant rates. Luckily for me I’m only losing around 40% of the value. So I sell up my holdings and get the plex.

So for all the trials and tribulations I’ve experienced over the last 13 days or so, I’m still in high spirits but a little underwhelmed by the surgical nature of its conclusion, but at least now I can say I’ve explored Null Sec with paper armor and lived enough times to have made a profit 😉

I’ll admit that these losses are starting to get to me, perhaps the biggest issue is the wasted hours. At the weekend I lost 20 hours of profit. Ho hum risk vs reward yada yada.

So again I’m back in Null Sec being ultra cautious.. I’ll try to cover what I’m doing to be cautious.

Before I jump through a series of system I’ll use the Star Map Statistic functions to address; How many people are in the systems(average for last 30 minutes), how many player ships destroyed in the system within hour/24 hours, how many NPC have been destroyed, etc etc this is to try to form an idea of the risks involved in jumping into that system, am I going to hit a gate camp, am I exposing myself to PVPers.

When I’m in system and its not empty I will check the user name against a Killmail site online to see what ships they are using recently and what kind of threat they pose. Character age and habits can also be gleaned from this information.

Additionally I will be doing a 360 degree D-Scan at max distance, I’m looking for ship hulls and probes that arent mine, different ship hulls have different threat levels, so know what you are looking at (get used to knowing what the different ships are capable of).

When I enter a system I intend to scan down I will also jump to a random celestial and then burn away from it, so that if someone tries to follow me I’ll be several hundred km for where they warp in.

I took it very slow and easy, doing safe log offs if I expected a local contact to be aggressive, and skirting around the edge of regions rather than dive through the centre.

Today’s sites were very very slow 😦 I was having difficulty scanning down a few sites, I found out that in order to scan down all sites you need almost 80 scan strength on your ship. mine was around 68, so a little way to go. NO amount of wiggling would get me to 100%.

Took me an hour to get out to Null, then my slow earnings were 40m for the first hour and 20m for the second, this was mostly due to lack of sites, and my inability to scan down the ones I found.

As I was floating down a tunnel of systems where each only linked to the next in the chain, I was ultra cautious around a faction frigate…. as I jump to the next gate the Frigate passes me in warp. the gate is empty as I arrive and the next system loads….. then all hell breaks loose. On the other side was the Faction Frigate and some friends, I see an Interdictor bubble surround me and 5 Frigate and Destroyer class ship attempt to lock me… I need options.

I can either burn out of the bubble and hope I’m not webbed and scrammed too much, or I can turn around and burn back to the gate… seeing as it was an Interdictor bubble and they can just fire another at me so I burned back to the gate full afterburner, my shields 60% depleted I jump systems “good choice Markus” but my celebrations were short lived 5 more ships decloak in front of me bubble me a pummel the crap out of me and my pod…. scratch Magnate number 5.

I spent much of Day 9 either at work, or working on this Blog, I really need a better avenue for advertising it, feel free to add a comment with suggestions.

And now on with the show, so I’ve got around 200million to make, and I’m still milling around in JITA. I’m watching local a little bored and zoned out, and notice someone states “First person to chat this (some random odd arrow characters) gets 1m isk”, now I have no problem with these sorts of things and my hand/eye coordination and short cut key usage is well trained and I paste the required text in short order….. and then my wallet blinks!

Oh Crap… this isnt supposed to happen on this account !! no scams and no assistance!! OH NOES

It turns out the wallet blinked for 10m not 1m, he’d put an extra zero on the end…..

I then chat him and mention that I’ll need to donate the money, and I mentioned my Blog, he asked how much I had, I told him 375 mill, and then my wallet blinks!!! for 200 MILLION isk GOD DAMMIT, I then complain profusely I tell him thats not the way I wanted this character to roll. So I try to transfer it back to him…..but its a trial account, I cant *FUMES*…. one Support Ticket later all is right with the world (Yes the GMs returned the funds quite happily).

This isnt the first time I’ve been offered cash just to plex the account, but the whole point was to earn it myself, so I’ve sent them packing. So if you see an odd transaction or 4 in the account, thats where the money came and went from.

Now back to the exploration. Sometimes its not a straightforward thing to go from High Sec to Null Sec… today was one of those days. I managed to go from Jita to Dodixie in 5 jumps with lots of scanning in between… there were just no other wormhole exits other than 2 High Sec portals 😦 So I move over a few systems and try again, there is potentially some activity in this new hole so I’m very cautious and take my time ensuring I’m safe.

Finally an hour later I’m in Null, Thukker Tribe area. I’m so close to my goal that I take extra precautions and avoid busier systems I only need to make 200m and then I’m done. I come across a Relic site in a very empty system… but try as I might I cannot get the warp to 😦 95.8 was the highest I got, I was moving those probes individually all over the place 😦 after maybe 20 minutes of trying I give up and move over, 90 minutes down and zero income, not good. A few more systems down I find a site where I extract 40m in goods, and then another hour passes pickings are slim and the takings seem to have dropped off 60m haul and getting a little tired. Lets move onto the next system…. ready, aim, JUMP.

“hang on this doesnt look right” as I enter the new system there are a lot of people on gate, its ok they cant see me, I’m cloaked… but they know that I just entered the system at one of the gates… ok there is no warp disruptor up, I just need to pick the I’m nearly align to and jump.. decloaked… aligning… targetted…. WHOOSH! no no thats not the sound of my warp engaging… that was the sound of having a Warp Disruption bubble FIRED at me!!!! (Interdictors are the shiptype that can fire these) no escaping that one… warp bubbled, warpscrammed, webbed, neuted and shot to hell…. no escape from this. and the guys took FOREVER to pop the pod 😦

I’m not sure there is anything I could have done here, except maybe turn around and head back for the gate I was at, with afterburner blaring, a little shocked and stunned so lost valuable seconds.

All I had to show for 3 hours work was a 65million isk kill mail, such is life/death and EvE 🙂

I’m still on track for the plex so its all good.

Liquid isk: 370,000,000

Estimated assets: 20,000,000

Null Space Cargo Value: empty, but safe

Approx Net Worth(incl. cargo) : 400 million (Jita Plex is 570million)

PvP Related losses : 385 million

Total value earned: 785 million (much more than a plex…. but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush)

After the horrendous events of the weekend, I should perhaps add a glimmer of hope to all those following my blog

Ok midnight has hit so technically its Day 9, double espresso and I’m good to go. This time I get rid of the Nano’s and just go with FOUR Web Stabilzers. I REALLY want to be able to escape this time, also a point to note, I have seen warpdisruption bubbles, but they have not been manned. So I’ve just breezed through, it did get a little hairy with the NPCs on gate, but the afterburner keeps the travel time low and provides some incoming damage mitigation.

So I troop out to Null and end up in ORE faction territory, there is a long deadend chain nearby with very few pilots in space or docked (you can view these statistics in the Star Map) each quiet system I go through, I stop and scan down any sites, Progress today seems very speedy there are lots of Data sites, which is a bit of a pain as I’m more specialised in Relic sites, oh well.

I seemed to get rather lucky cracking open some of the more difficult ones, but the considerable quantity of sites I’m scanning down is certainly helping. Something I’ve now started doing is checking peoples history up on the killmail website, this gives me an indication of how safe I can be.

Net cargo worth ≈ 160m

Hmm now I seem to be most at risk when going through WH space as there is no local to track… I think I’ll just stick around here and fill may cargo…. it seems a nice enough area.

I’d like to point out at this point I’m being ULTRA cautious, if I need a pee break, or a food break, its a full “log out safely” proceedure… I dont want to lose another ship…

My haul continues to grow, as I’m getting LOTS of sites, oddly enough mostly Data so I’m breaking alot of them, 1 system kept spawning them, did around 5 of them in short order (they actually respawned as I emptied them)

Oh Crap Haul value … 300mil I think its time to go home.

Luckily for me its 8am in the morning when I do this jump (yay 4 hours sleep) and all seems very quiet… a little too quiet…

I get a wormhole exit to lowsec… here we go again…. hmm 9 jumps to a Trade Hub… 4 jumps of lowsec, but I feel empowered i have FOUR warp stabilzers on my ship, RUN RABBIT RUN!!!! I burn to the nearest gate and immediately jump…. I fly to the next one and its a little slow to acknowledge the zone change.. I click furiously on the jump button, Jump dammit jump there are ships here and they dont look friendly LEMME IN!!! finally the gate gives up and lets me jump… phew only 2 more jumps to relative safety….

Its worth pointing out at this point…. I have a cargo worth 300m…. I’m in a paper thin flying coffin… if I’m locked and scanned by a suicide ganker they WILL execute me, and it will cost them a couple of mill…

Heart still racing a bit… I have half a plex worth in my hold…..1 jump to goooo…. FREEEEEEDDOOOOOM

Ok concentrate now, its high sec but its still not safe, I continue manually piloting to my destination (Auto-pilot WILL get you killed at some point) and then I arrive… but wait! I know have another form of PvP to contend with THE DAMN MARKETS!!!!!

Ok perhaps slightly overdramatic, but on reviewing Amarr prices and JITA prices… I’m better off going Jita for faster cash… and it IS worth it to make the trip, its like a good 15-20% increase on my haul.

This pretty much brings us to the end of Day 9 part i, this was the morning before work, so I suspect I may be able to get out a little this evening and earn the last couple of hundred mill I need.

Here endeth the lessons

Liquid isk: 375,000,000

Estimated assets: 20,000,000

Null Space Cargo Value: empty, but safe

Approx Net Worth(incl. cargo) : 405 million (Jita Plex is 570million)

PvP Related losses : 320 million

Total value earned: 725 million (much more than a plex…. but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush)